Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh responded Monday to recent reported comments by President Obama.

(CNN) - Radio host Rush Limbaugh said Monday that President Obama is “frightened of me.”

“He’s obviously more frightened of me than he is [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell,” Limbaugh told listeners. “He’s more frightened of me, then he is of say, [House Minority Leader] John Boehner, which doesn’t say much about our party.”

Limbaugh’s comments followed reports Obama warned GOP congressional leaders last week that they should stop listening to the conservative talker, who had said on air he wanted the new president to fail.

"Now this is the great unifier," he told listeners Monday. "This is the man who's going to unify everybody and usher in a new era of bipartisanship and love."

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs gave reporters the administration's latest message to Limbaugh at Monday's press briefing: "Tell him I said, 'Hi,'" he joked.

CNN=Politics Daily is The Best Political Podcast from The Best Political Team.

(CNN) - It was a one-day unemployment bloodbath as tens of thousands of people lost their jobs at some of America’s biggest and best-known corporations. Critics say President Barack Obama’s actions could make economic matters worse by hitting one industry particularly hard, in an effort to make the U.S. more energy independent. In the latest installment of CNN=Politics Daily, CNN White House correspondent Dan Lothian takes a look at the two big issues on the president’s plate – saving the economy and saving the planet.

Also: Vice President Joe Biden makes a deal with President Obama - he won’t be a “deputy president” like those before him. So how will Biden’s VP role differ from former Vice President Dick Cheney’s? CNN’s Brian Todd explains.

Meanwhile: President Obama launches his first peace mission. CNN’s foreign affairs correspondent Jill Dougherty takes a look at his new Middle East envoy.

(CNN) - House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers issued a new subpoena for former Bush adviser Karl Rove Monday.

Rove was subpoenaed by Conyers last year, but refused to testify before Congress, pointing to executive privilege although he was no longer part of the administration.

“I have said many times that I will carry this investigation forward to its conclusion, whether in Congress or in court, and today’s action is an important step along the way,” Conyers said in a statement released Monday. “Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it. After two years of stonewalling, it’s time for him to talk.”

The Michigan congressman is again looking to question Rove over whether the prosecution of former Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman, and the firing of the U.S. attorneys, were politically motivated. Rove has denied playing a part in either affair.

President Barack Obama has pledged to work with Republicans on his economic stimulus package.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - If there was one message that resonated loud and clear from the Obama campaign, it was this: Let's get past all of the partisanship and work together to get something done.

Turns out, President Barack Obama actually meant it. He's been meeting with congressional Republicans (and will trek to the Hill again Tuesday).

He's been listening to their ideas, incorporating some tax-cut ideas. And, yes, he's also been turning some down. After all, as he told Republicans last week, he was the one who won the election.

So what we're watching now as the stimulus package takes shape is the legislative equivalent of the first date: Republicans meeting with the new president, sizing him up. Obama deciding whether the GOP is serious about working with him.

"He [Obama] came to a conclusion early on in his political career that partisan polarization is a large part of the problem," says a senior Obama adviser. "Both in reality and in the minds of the American people."

WASHINGTON (CNN) The GOP - looking for a glimmer of hope in the wake of November’s drubbing - has trained their eyes on Virginia, where Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell is pitching himself as a solutions-oriented leader who can reverse the commonwealth’s leftward drift.

And McDonnell, running in a state The Weekly Standard has dubbed “Ground Zero for the GOP,” is working overtime to avoid mistakes that have vexed Republicans in recent election cycles.

The commonwealth’s current attorney general is promising that unlike other recent Republican campaigns, his will aggressively target younger voters using new technology. On Monday, the same day Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe used text messaging to announce his first TV spot, McDonnell posted a promise on the popular conservative blog RedState that Republicans, not Democrats, will be the tech-wizards of the 2009 governor’s race.

(CNN) - With President Barack Obama limiting how and where detainees at Guantanamo Bay can be interrogated, some analysts are asking if intelligence agencies will be able to get the information they need to keep the country safe - and where the prisoners will eventually end up.

Fresh off his inauguration, Obama issued executive orders relating to Guantanamo, including one requiring that the detention facility be closed within a year.

During a signing ceremony at the White House on January 22, Obama reaffirmed his inauguration pledge that the United States does not have "to continue with a false choice between our safety and our ideals."

The president said he was issuing the order to close the facility in order to "restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism."

At its peak, Gitmo held 770 people the U.S. government believed may have been involved in terrorist activity or military action against the nation. The facility drew sharp criticism, including from Obama as he campaigned for the presidency.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Monday that he considered Oprah Winfrey to replace President Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate.

(CNN) - Surprised to hear Illinois might have had a Senator Oprah? So was Winfrey herself.

The talk show host said Monday she’d had no clue Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich had considered tapping her for the state’s open Senate slot before he confirmed the news in a Monday morning TV interview.

"If I had been watching [the ABC interview], as I watch from the treadmill, I probably would have fallen off the treadmill," Winfrey told friend Gayle King in a radio interview after hearing the news.

Blagojevich admitted Monday he once considered asking the media mogul to fill the senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama, before deciding to appoint former state attorney general Roland Burris.

“She seemed to be someone who had helped Barack Obama in a significant way to become President,” he told ABC, adding that Winfrey “had a much broader bully pulpit than a lot of senators."

The embattled governor - currently facing impeachment proceedings for allegedly plotting to sell the vacant position to the highest bidder - will take calls from viewers tonight on CNN’s Larry King Live at 9 pm ET.

Staff for the new, wired president found themselves without e-mail Monday.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - President Obama has his blackberry — but his tech-savvy press operation has been without e-mail for most of the day, and it’s not yet clear when they’ll get it back.

Obama press staffers had just made the leap to their official White House e-mail addresses Monday morning when the Outlook server went down. They weren’t the only ones affected by the crash, which also hit the first lady’s office and other White House offices.

An apologetic Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters at 1:30 pm press briefing that the server meltdown was responsible for the delay in responding to their e-mailed questions. But late Monday, nearly six hours since the server first went haywire, staffers still can’t use their official e-mail addresses — and a press aide could not tell CNN when the press office might be able to start sending and receiving messages again.

New York Gov. David Paterson announced his pick of Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate.

(CNN) - More than three times as many New Yorkers in a new poll blame Caroline Kennedy and her team for the messy process surrounding the search for Hillary Clinton’s Senate replacement than fault the state’s governor, David Paterson - although, on balance, his final selection meets with their approval.

Forty-nine percent of voters surveyed in a Quinnipiac University poll released Monday said Kennedy and her advisers were to blame, to 15 percent who pointed to Paterson. Twelve percent blame both, and 24 percent are undecided.

Overall, the state’s voters approve of Paterson’s selection of Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, backing the pick 46 to 30 percent, with 24 percent undecided. That margin is higher upstate, where the choice of the Albany-born Gillibrand draws the approval of 55 percent of the region’s voters to 25 percent who disapprove. In New York City, that margin is far smaller: there, the conservative Democrat draws the approval of 41 percent to 34 percent who disapprove. But in the state’s suburbs, her edge falls within the survey’s 3 point margin of error: 35 percent approve, 32 percent do not.